Chests are Minecraft blocks that allow your character to store items gathered throughout the game.

Steps

Method1

Making a single chest

A single chest can store up to 27 stacks of items or blocks. It can hold up to 1728 blocks.

1

Get eight wooden planks.

2

Place the planks in the crafting table. Use the chest recipe to craft the chest: Arrange the planks in every slot, apart from the middle one.

3

Place the chest. Always place a chest with free space above it. Otherwise, you won't be able to open it!

Note that there are a few blocks that won't stop the chest from being opened if they're placed on top of it. These include: water, lava, leaves, cactus, glass, snow, stairs, farmland, cake, beds, fence, another chest, a torch, rails, signs, and a few more (translucent blocks).

Method2

Creating a large chest

A large chest will have 54 storage slots. It opens as a single chest, with six rows of slots and can hold up to 3,456 blocks.

1

Make the chest as for the single chest above. You can't craft a large chest.

2

Place two chest blocks adjacent to each other. You now have a large chest.

Note that large chests cannot be created right beside each other.

Method3

Creating a Trapped Chest

This is much like a normal chest, with a few differences. for one, it releases redstone when open. Two, it can be placed next to a normal chest.

1

Obtain a single normal chest.

2

Make a tripwire hook. These are made by, in a crafting table, putting 1 plank on top of a stick, on top of an iron ingot.

3

Combine the hook and the chest in the crafting table. This is a shapeless recipe.

Note that you can put two trapped chests next to each other, to make a large chest.

Method4

Understanding chest orientation

1

Note that chests are designed with compass orientation that affects placement of items.

The top three rows in the chest correspond to the western or northern chest block.

The bottom three rows correspond to the southern or eastern chest block.

In the large chest, you'll find the items organized into the southern or eastern side, which will depend on the orientation of the chest.

Method5

Using your newly created chest

For the first time of use, here is what to do:

1

Right click on the chest. It will open.

2

Transfer items into the chest. Shift click on the item. The item will go into a slot that's available for it.

3

Transfer items out of the chest. As with the previous step, shift click on the item in the chest and it will come out of the chest.

Left clicking will help you to collect all of the items in the slot. Left click again to place items.

Right clicking will let you take just half of the items in a slot.

Right click to place a single item.

4

To close the chest, simply press the inventory button or the ESC button.

Method6

Finding chests

1

Look for goodies to grab from naturally occurring chests. The best place to look is in dungeons (under guard though), NPC villages, abandoned mineshafts, jungle and desert temples and strongholds.

Community Q&A

Video

Tips

If a chest is destroyed, it will release its contents. You'll need to salvage them and place them in a new chest. Note that if only half of the chest is destroyed, the items from the destroyed part will drop out but the remaining chest will stay as a small chest and keep the items it already contains. Again, you'll need to salvage the dropped items.

Chests will change to look like presents on December 24th and 25th.

Chests will face your character when they're placed.

Double chests cannot be placed right next to each other.

Warnings

Updates to the game may change some of the content. In which case, feel free to edit to bring this up-to-date again.